Lots of people can't even spell 'tariff'...

I've been scrolling around and adding twenty-plus percent to Sellier & Bellot, Magtech, Fiocchi, Wolf, PMC, some varieties of Winchester...

(This is to say nothing of CZ, Taurus, most HKs and Glocks, all the various Turkish companies, lotsa Berettas...)

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Written Elsewhere...

• My 200th post at Cars Gone By: A 1966 Mustang GT convertible.


• On the reasons behind the enduring popularity of the 1911.


• The U-Shaped Utility Curve of All the Things.

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Gun Geekery...

The patent that made the micro-nine possible...

Micro pistol and micro poker.

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Swole Savage

New from Savage is this upgrade of the Stance, called the Stance XR.

It's higher capacity than the original, shipping with a 10-round flush-fit mag and a 13-round 'stendo, and it has the most innovative quick-detach MRDS mount I've yet seen. It allows a lower-third co-witness (at least with this Riton dot), comes with night sights, adds a tabbed trigger for enhanced drop safety, and the dot mount seems to have true return-to-zero functionality.

A feature-length review is coming in Shooting Illustrated as soon as I've wrung it out some more. (I already put a bit more than half a case of ammo through it in a 2-day class with Chris Cerino at Range Ready earlier this year.)

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Ballistic Testing...

At the range yesterday doing ballistic gel shooting with a few loads in two different chamberings, one of which was .327 Federal Magnum. The test gun was this Taurus 327 TORO with a Gideon Judge optic.

As a control round, I used a .32 H&R Magnum Hornady 80gr FTX Critical Defense. The Critical Defense did not expand through 4LD, and I didn't expect that ti would. It came to rest backwards in the gel block, 13" in.

The .327 Federal Hydra-Shok 85gr projectile, normally an iffy expander in 4LD, proved that even an iffy projectile can expand if you put enough ass behind it. It mushroomed nicely and came to rest, also base-first, at the 14" mark, just beyond the Hornady bullet.

The 100gr .327 Fed Gold Dot worked exactly as predicted: It expanded like a catalog photo and was found tangled in the denim on the far side of the 16" gel block. This is pretty much identical to what you get from 9mm 124gr +P GDHP and HST, which are pretty much the current gold standards, and it's what the load was designed to emulate.

That's the load I'm going to sight the dot in with.

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Tab Clearing...

• Tribal Lore of the People of the Gun: A great list of essential reading from Gorillafritz. If you don't know where yo've come from, it's hard to figure out which way you should be going.


• A weird longing for the communist past among some Russians, and the weird love of Russia from some Americans are two things I just do not understand. The Cold War sucked.


• Bobbi fell into a burning (jalapeño) ring of fire.

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Random Gun Stuff...

• The Case for Pocket Poppers: Not everything needs to be a Glock 19.


• Why "Well, I know a Green Beret, and he said..." may not have much relevance to private citizen defensive firearms use.


• What's the difference between porting and compensators?

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Celebrities are supposed to be role models, right?

Sean "Diddy" Combs knows the score: A dry carbine is a malfunction-prone carbine...

There are two kinds of people: Those who were horrified by this article, and those who were horrified by this article but wish with every fiber of their being that they could have sent this screen shot to Uncle Pat.

(Note for the humorless: By all accounts this guy is a real dirtbag, one of those sorts of dude who uses clout and success as tools to victimize women for his personal jollies, and they're apparently still writing books to throw at him... but any gun nerd chuckled at the plain text of that headline.)

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Hey, Look!

Always be learning!

The first few times at the range with a handgun are a real big deal for most folks, and you’re likely to imprint pretty strongly on the first pistols you tried, the words of wisdom from your dad/cop friend/whoever took you to the range that first time and the coaching from the instructor at your first concealed-carry class.

For most people, that’s about as far as it goes. Shooting isn’t a hobby, nor are guns a lifestyle for most firearm owners. They’ll get to the range a couple times a year, maybe, and 20 years from now they’ll still be shooting the same way they were when they started out. They may retain some of the basics, or they may not.

The fact that you’re reading my column in this magazine indicates that you’re probably a little more into shooting than the statistically most common handgun owner. Like the music enthusiast who seeks out new bands to listen to, you’re probably more open to broadening your shooting horizons than Joe and Suzy Average. Perhaps you seek out coaching from different instructors in order to learn new techniques. I know I do.

Ink on Steel, Old and New

Issue number 40 of RECOIL: CONCEALMENT is available, and I've got two pieces in it: A Classic Carry piece on the Harrington & Richardson self-loading .25 and .32 pistols from ye olden tymes, and a 400-round review of the new Bersa B1911.

The data box David Merrill did for the H&R .25 made me spew soda out my nose...

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Lever-age

At the range last week I helped Michael Grasso dial in his .44 levergun with some .44 Special loads, just because having a gun in the house with an unsighted optic is anathema to all right-thinking people.

That mount for the Aimpoint Acro was pretty groovy. I hadn't gotten a good look at one before. I also dug the Magpul ELG furniture, although I'd expected to. I remember being skeptical of their shotgun stock before it came out and winding up having to eat crow, so...

Some people are skeptical, but I think a levergun has its uses, although it's possible to get carried away with one. 

I remember back at TacCon '19, Lee Weems made a pretty good case for why he used a .30-30 as a patrol rifle...

See the dot, hit a lot...

Back at the range with the Staccato C on Tuesday morning.

The reticle on the Trijicon RMR HD is selectable between a regular dot and an EOTech-esque "donut of death" that has a central dot, a large circle, and crosshairs-style tick marks at the top, bottom, and sides of the circle. That might be okay atop a carbine or something, and I guess it could be helpful for people who have difficulty finding the dot, but in that little slide-mounted MRDS window both Michael and I found it a little cramped and busy and we opted for the plain dot.

Anyway, the Staccato C made it through another two hundred rounds without any sort of malfunction, bringing the total round count thus far to six hundred rounds. Fourteen hundred left to go.

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Reliability Check...

My friend Michael Grasso was able to obtain a loaner RMR HD from Trijicon to use on the Staccato C test pistol. There's some question as to whether the fact that the element slightly overhanging the rear edge of the ejection port would affect the reliable ejection of spent cases or not.

I was optimistic, since I've put thousands of rounds through several FN509's wearing a Trijicon SRO, which similarly overhangs the rear of the ejection port, without any problems.

We mounted the optic, got it dialed in, and proceeded to crank out two hundred rounds at a pace that left the slide hot enough to be painful to the touch. Not only were there no malfunctions of any type, the brass does not seem to contact the sight housing at all.

This morning I'll get back to the range and we'll try some different brands of ammunition with varying power factors.

A new 2k round test begins...

So here's the new Staccato C with its redesigned magazine profile and 4" barrel. Staccato also sent along their new in-house match ammo, loaded with the 125gr Hornady Action Pistol projectile.

Yesterday morning saw me at the range with my friend Michael Grasso and 200 rounds of ammunition. I glorped some FP-10 lubricant onto the slide rails and around the flared lockup area on the barrel out by the muzzle and then it was off to the races. We only had two magazines, but we also had two Uplulas, so one of us would blaze away while the other hastily stuffed fifteen rounds into a magazine.

By the end of the 200 rounds, the pistol was noticeably toasty to the touch, however we were off to a promising start. The Staccato C went through the full cycle of operation every time with no malfunctions of any type to report. 200 rounds down, 1800 to go.

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What in the wide, wide world of sports?

So, a little after seven AM on Saturday morning, a dude here in Indianapolis wanders out to his truck with three kids in tow. He unlocks the truck, retrieves the pistol that he'd had in the cab, cranks a round off into the air, and then hands it to one of the kids, who proceeds to do likewise. The kids then pass it around, each of them popping a few rounds into the sky... at a 45 degree angle, you know, ensuring the bullet will travel as far as possible ...before handing the pistol back to its owner who then empties most of the rest of the mag into the clouds.

It's all on video.

The dude got arrested and, you know what? Good. Lock his ass up for a bit. And he better have to forfeit the blaster, too. Clip a corner off my lolbertarian card or whatever, but maybe gun ownership isn't for him.

Does this look like there's a safe direction in any direction?

The next 2,000 round test.

The latest offering from Staccato, the Staccato C... (with a brief digression to note that there was a previous, now discontinued, model with the same designation) ...is kind of a big deal for the company. 

In some ways it's a longer-barreled version of the existing Staccato CS and shares magazines with it, and the magazines are the big deal part. Earlier double-stack Staccatos were using magazines whose geometry was inherited from the days when 2011-pattern pistols were expected to run with rounds like 10mm Auto and .45ACP. Because they had to accommodate wider, straight-walled cartridges, that made functioning with the smaller-diameter, tapered 9x19mm trickier.

The new magazine bodies are designed entirely around functioning with 9mm, and are said to make a big difference.

Well, we've got a test pistol and 2,500 rounds of ammo to run through it here, and we're fixing to find out. Look for updates at this blog and a feature length wrap-up in an upcoming issue of Shooting Illustrated.

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Tab Clearing...

• Hipster Tactical reviews the Archon Type B.


• The value of life experience in being a peace officer.


• Is the auto industry looking at electric cars the wrong way?

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Myths and Legends

Harrington & Richardson's little .25 Auto, based on a Webley design, is entirely devoid of sights. The smooth curve of the slide's upper surface is unmarred by any notch, groove, or bump.

Bring this up on a gun forum or at the neighborhood gun shop and you will undoubtedly hear the reply "Oh, it's a belly gun!" Longtime readers of this space will know that this is my bête noire because how do you know it's going to be a belly fight? A dude sticks you up from a dozen or more feet away and you're gonna what? Say "Oh whoopsie! Hey, dude, I only brought my belly gun today. Wait right here while I run home and get something with some sights"?

Carrying a gun with not even the most rudimentary sights is like showing up at the golf course with a whole bag full of putters. It displays a failure to grasp the potential requirements. It's not like it conveys any advantage, either. What, does it make this thing faster to draw or something? As if!

Then we have some classic Winchester .25ACP ammunition, the 45 grain "Expanding Point" round, catalogued as the X25AXP. Sometimes referred to as the "Pellet Nose" round, this is a .25 caliber jacketed hollow point with a #4 steel shot pellet seated in the cavity. The idea being that it made the projectile more feed-friendly in older or jankier pocket pistols, but the pellet would push back into the bullet to initiate expansion on impact.

On the downside, it didn't work that way. On the upside, that's a good thing, because the last thing you want your .25ACP bullet to do is expand. The .25 Auto is one of the few handgun rounds that's almost as miserable a performer as popular myth suggests. It's a marginal penetrator under the best of circumstances and doesn't have any oomph to waste on expansion. If you're stuck with a deuce-five, stick with ball.

Having, Collecting, Hoarding, Disposing

If you have a hobby that entails accumulating a lot of stuff, have you considered how best to dispose of it when you're gone? Your kids, or other next of kin, may not necessarily be interested in your cameras, guns, or cars.

Some things, like books or action figures or toy trains, are fairly easy to dispose of. Worst-case scenario you can haul the books to Half Price Books and the Beanie Babies to Goodwill.

Other items, like firearms or motor vehicles, may have additional legal entanglements. It's worth thinking about how to mitigated the hassles that'll cause your family ahead of time.

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Starting Off Right

A blog reader has sent a review copy of a book entitled How to Buy Your First Gun.

With first-time gun purchases still surging, this book will be a handy guide for anyone looking to buy a handgun, most especially with an eye primarily toward personal protection.

The guide is practical, with step-by-step instructions for everything from selecting a pistol, proper safety procedures, and basic gun handling and marksmanship.

It's biased toward the defensive shooter, recommending a Glock 19 rather than the old "Buy a .22 and get used to it", but it eschews tacticool terminology, militant bravado, and political stuff, meaning it's suitable for anybody from your mom to your slightly patchouli-scented co-worker who's suddenly worried about carjackings. Plus it has suggestions for finding training as well as further reading and exploration which are great (and I'm not just saying that because this blog gets mentioned.)

If you know someone looking to make the leap to buying their first blaster, they could do a lot worse than reading this handy guide.

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